After break-ins,gaffes and scandals, the Mississippi Senate race now includes a flashback to the state’s troubled racial politics.

Tea Partier Chris McDaniel has taken $800 in donations from Carl Ford, a former lawyer for Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who died in prison after being convicted of the murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. Ford also is active in the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and was active in the Klan in Laurel, Mississippi, in the early 1960s.

After break-ins,gaffes and scandals, the Mississippi Senate race now includes a flashback to the state’s troubled racial politics.

Tea Partier Chris McDaniel has taken $800 in donations from Carl Ford, a former lawyer for Sam Bowers, the imperial wizard of the White Knights of the Ku Klux Klan who died in prison after being convicted of the murder of civil rights activist Vernon Dahmer. Ford also is active in the League of the South, a neo-Confederate organization that has been labeled a hate group by the Southern Poverty Law Center and was active in the Klan in Laurel, Mississippi, in the early 1960s.